If The Ubuntu Edge Crowdfunding Experiment Works, Backers May Get To Vote On The Next Model's Specs

Smartphone companies have it pretty rough - they've got to sink millions into research and development every year, all in the hope of making their next shiny touchscreen gewgaw the fastest, slimmest, smartest, prettiest one ever. And every year we eat it all up, and take what we're given.

But Canonical, the folks behind the incredibly popular Ubuntu Linux distro, isn't your average phone smartphone company. It doesn't have a huge production budget like Samsung or Apple, so it decided to crowdfund the creation of its first phone. Turns out that's not the only thing they're doing differently - Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth is currently fielding questions on Reddit, and he's expressed interest in having backers of this current project getting some sort of say over what goes in future models.

And thus, Mark may have just come up with the coolest backer perk ever. Quoth Shuttleworth:

"This first version of the Edge is to prove the concept of crowdsourcing ideas for innovation, backed by crowdfunding. If it gets greenlighted, then I think we'll have an annual process by which the previous generation backers get to vote on the spec for the next generation of Edge."

In case you haven't been following the story, the Edge is an awfully handsome concept for a phone that will run Ubuntu and Android and sport a sapphire glass-covered 4.5-inch 1280 720 display, along with the "fastest available" multi-core mobile processor, 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. The internet being what it is, Redditors couldn't help but throw out bits of hardware for Shuttleworth and the Edge team to consider for the current model anyway. IR blaster? A "cool idea," he says. Wireless charging? Probably not going to happen.

Shuttleworth was pretty forthcoming when it came to lingering questions about the Edge's design and proposed rollout. As it happens, the team is still having trouble figuring out what sort of speaker system to throw into the thing (my two cents: the closer to HTC's Boomsound setup the better), but it Canonical has asked potential carrier partners to agree to take note of a set of conditions that should minimize bloatware if the Edge is ever picked up and sold with long-term contracts.

Now this all hinges on the notion that Canonical was right in thinking that enough people would believe in a company that has never made a smartphone before to basically pre-order one for (at least) $675. In a way, this is a perfect move - if the project hits critical mass, everyone gets a phone. If it doesn't, well, no harm no foul. The crowdfunding movement has given a software company a shot at really making a mark in an industry dominated by giants, some of which are already feeling the pinch because their pricey flagship devices perhaps aren't selling in the astronomical numbers they were hoping for.

And so far, things appear to be going rather well. Canonical's Indiegogo campaign only went live three days ago and Ubuntu fans have already chipped in just a hair under $6 million. Of course, there's no guarantee that sort of traction will continue for any serious length of time - the company has already had to add some less expensive device pricing tiers to keep the campaign from flaming out too soon, and it's still got a ways to go before it hits the $32 million goal.

(Oh, and in case you were wondering, Shuttleworth seems to be tackling nearly every question being thrown at him - no Rampart shenanigans here.)

Chromebook Pixel can boot into Ubuntu and Linux Mint, just like a real laptop

There are plenty of reasons to not want to spend $1450 on the Chromebook Pixel, but most of them are an extension of the fact that Chrome OS hasn’t grown up enough to replace a traditional OS. Fortunately, Google’s new BIOS makes it easier to work around the native operating system than any Chrome OS hardware before it.

The main appeal of the Samsung Chromebook and its ilk has been price. For $250, you could afford to pick one up and see if you were going to like it. You could give one as a gift to that family member who considered it a biological imperative to click on every link they came across, leaving you to scrub the shame off of their hard drive the next time you were over for a visit.

It seemed, for a while, that the whole point of Chrome OS was to offer something for those who rely on the web exclusively. When offered with inexpensive hardware, this all makes perfect sense. When you offer that web-only experience in one of the most expensive (non-Apple) consumer laptops on the market, the least you can do is make it so power users don’t have to work too hard to get more out of that gorgeous hardware.

Like all Chromebooks before it, the Pixel offers a Developer Mode. It’s triggered by a simple toggle switch which, if flipped, allows the user to sit outside of the Chrome OS sandbox and get creative. This version of Chrome OS takes things further with a semi-writable BIOS. Unlike all previous Chrome OS hardware, the Pixel offers a secondary BIOS that is not Read Only, and is accessible in Developer Mode. This means that installing other operating systems is as simple as booting from an SD card or USB stick with a Linux image and then installing, just like you would on any other computer that’s not “protected” with Secure Boot.

So far, several users have taken advantage of this, and in a short while there were mostly functional versions of Ubuntu and Mint running on the Chromebook Pixel. You lose that luxurious trackpad until someone gets it working in Linux, but the rest of the OS works just fine.

An alternative solution is to use Linux in a virtualized manner. Crouton is a tool developed by a Googler to allow for Ubuntu to exist virtualized, but allow you to use the alternative to Chrome OS as though it is running naturally. Crouton is specifically for Ubuntu right now, with a publicly available GitHub that explains in detail how to install and use this new OS on your Chromebook. Ubuntu will be given its own file system to run in, with applications that run in its own environment, just like a virtual machine.

Remember: if you choose to use your Chromebook Pixel this way, you’re stuck in Developer Mode. This means that your Chromebook will take 30 seconds longer than usual to load every time you start it, because the boot sequence feels the need to take that time to remind you that you’re in Developer Mode. It also means that your laptop is less secure, in that a root exploit can grant any user access to the whole system. There’s no real way to escape this, and while it may seem like a small price to pay for full-fledged Linux on your Pixel, it is also a daily reminder that you’re not using the laptop the way it was originally intended.